


into the palm of your hand

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Communication, Established Relationship, Insecurity, M/M, Nebulous Well-Adjusted Future, Past Alex Manes/Original Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: An ex-boyfriend of Alex's is coming to town, and Michael just wonders why Alex didn't tell him.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 47
Kudos: 321





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from i can change by brandon flowers
> 
> this fic is not for redistribution without my express permission

Liz is the first person to tell him.

“When can you make it to the lab?” He asks, popping a fresh fry into his mouth. They don’t have anything in the works at the moment, but that doesn’t mean Michael doesn’t have ideas to bounce off her.

“Really just Friday,” she replies. “Will you be busy that night?”

“Nah. No plans.”

“Okay! I’d just thought you might be meeting Alex’s friend this weekend.”

“Friend?”

“O-oh, uh, yeah. Um, an Air Force friend, I think? We were supposed to get lunch, but he had to take a phone call, and I overheard them talking. Maybe an ex-boyfriend, even? Alex seemed to know him really well, if you know what I mean. I mean, uh—” her eyes go almost comically wide. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Sorry, I figured you knew…?” Liz bites her lip on a sort of wince, and Michael has to take a deep breath to brace his way through the twin waves of awkwardness and paranoia.

It probably really is nothing, right? He’s not a secret from Alex’s friends, at least, not his _existence,_ even if they don’t know anything about him. It’s hard to tell your friends you’re dating an alien, sure, but it isn’t exactly easy to tell them you’re dating a mechanic with a criminal record. Michael wouldn’t blame Alex for keeping that part under wraps too. It’s already more than he thought he’d ever have to wander through the background while Alex is FaceTiming like he’s just part of the scenery, just part of the backdrop to Alex’s home.

Even if this person _is_ a former boyfriend it’s probably still…okay? The thought doesn’t make it any easier to breathe, but Michael would never insult Alex by thinking he could be disloyal. He wouldn’t cheat, not Alex, that isn’t where the fear and helplessness come from, it’s. It’s that Alex might have been hoping to let this visit slide by without getting Michael involved because, well.

What if he’s just ashamed? Embarrassed?

So Michael tries to keep it light. He says goodbye to a nervous-looking Liz, and on his way home he brings back coffee and croissants on a whim, even, and like—is he really that nervous? That he’s thinking he has to sweeten the pot in order to get Alex to talk to him? He doesn’t _want_ to be angry, not when things have been so good lately. But why would Alex hide? About _this?_ What did Liz mean by _friend,_ even

His chest is tight and squeezing his heart by the time he gets home. The content smile on Alex’s face as he breathes in the coffee and says a quiet _thank you_ doesn’t make the pressure go away, it only squeezes him tighter, to be so in love, and so—worried.

“What’s the occasion?” Alex teases, pulling a still-warm pastry out of the bag.

Michael shrugs. “Had to walk past the coffee shop and thought of you.” Is that a lie? It kind of feels like one. “Um. But I did run into Liz.”

Slowly, so slowly that Michael thinks he might throw up, Alex puts the coffee back down on the table, folds his hands in front of him, unfolds them, picks at the flaking crust of the croissant, folds his hands again. “What did she have to say?” He finally asks, his voice hard, closed off.

Michael grits his teeth down hard to push back any involuntary sound. “Just that you had a—friend? Visiting from out of town. She just told me, I mean, I wasn’t trying to go behind your back—”

Alex sighs and scrubs a hand harshly through his hair. “Relax, Michael. I’m not mad.”

“Right. Why would you be? It’s just something you clearly didn’t want me to know and now I do so we have to talk about it even though if you wanted to do that you would have just told me in the first place. Speaking of which, why didn’t you?” His voice cracks the air, anger and hurt and the other things he was hoping to keep inside all spilling out of him at once, and he has to try and shove them back down his throat as quick as he can. “Fuck. Not that I expect you to tell me every little thing going on in your life. It’s just—"

“He’s not a friend. He’s an ex.” Alex stares into the middle distance. His voice hasn’t softened at all. Michael feels a bit like a monster for bringing it up at all.

“Oh.”

Michael rocks up onto the balls of his feet, then back down. It’s probably a bit selfish or petty or some other unflattering thing, but he hasn’t honestly spent any time thinking about the fact that Alex must _have_ exes. He’s brilliant and stubborn and magnetic and gorgeous—it’s not that Michael hasn’t thought that other people would want him—it’s not like he didn’t spend half of the past ten years lying awake wondering where he was and who he was with. It’s just that he hasn’t thought about it.

Alex is looking down at his folded hands, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Carefully, Michael walks broadly to the side and sits on the couch beside him, leaving plenty of space.

“He isn’t here because of me; he’s been temporarily assigned to a project at work. We trained together and have similar skillsets, and the project needed more manpower. That’s all.” Alex’s voice is clipped and businesslike and…odd. Michael wants to reach out to him, to touch his wrist or hold his hand, but he isn’t sure he’s allowed.

“Uh.” Michael swallows and thinks of the right thing to say. “Are you okay? Are you okay with him coming? Is he a problem? Is he going to make things difficult for you?”

 _Are you okay?_ It’s the only question that’s ever mattered at all, and Alex is the worst at answering it.

“Jake’s a professional.” Alex closes his eyes, and Michael wants to touch him even _more_ now. It isn’t pain in his face, not exactly, but an unhappiness in the line of his mouth. “That’s not fair,” he corrects himself. “Jake’s a good man. It’s just been a while and there are a lot of variables. New environmental factors, and I don’t know how they’ll react.”

The sinking feeling in Michael’s stomach hits rock bottom. “New environmental factors? Do you mean…”

“You’re part of it. And I haven’t seen him since I got hurt. Not because of it,” he says, eyes darting up, because the anger that burst inside Michael at the suggestion this fucker abandoned Alex when he needed him must have burst onto his face as well. “He’s…nice. We talked online after. But I haven’t seen him, and it’s exhausting wondering how every old acquaintance is going to act.”

Michael puts his hand on the couch between them as an offering, and he breathes a sigh of relief when, after a brief moment, Alex takes it in his own. He even pulls him in a little bit, so he can cradle Michael’s hand in his lap, watching their hands together instead of looking Michael in the eye. Finally, something softens a little in his face as he considers Michael’s calloused fingers and roughed-up knuckles, and he chances a glance up to meet Michael’s eyes, and he lets his shoulders drop. Michael takes a deep breath too.

They can do this. Talking? They got this. The muscles are stretched, now. Conditioned. It’s not like before, dumped into the middle of a marathon and told to run.

“I think Liz was worried I was gonna go full caveman,” Michael says lightly. “Is that something you’re worried about too? Because I promise I can control myself, even if he looks like a young Harrison Ford, speaks twelve languages, and promises to whisk you away to the Caribbean or something.”

Alex’s head snaps up at that, and his eyes narrow, and Michael grins, hoping he gets an earful for betraying his unspoken promise never to speak of Alex’s youthful crush on Han Solo—or at least that he’s succeeded in lightening the mood a little bit.

It’s not exactly thrilling that the people around him seem to think that Michael’s a jealous rage waiting to happen, though he can’t totally blame them for the assumption. He doesn’t relish the idea of dinner and drinks and small talk with some guy Alex got close to--physically, emotionally--while Michael was pining and hating himself and digging up the desert. Not his idea of a fun evening, sitting across from some successful and handsome golden boy who’s served with Alex, who understands implicitly a part of his life that Michael never will, a living and breathing reminder that he’s a dead end prospect with a rap sheet and a spaceship that will never fly and Alex has for some reason hitched himself to that wagon anyway. 

But he doesn’t want to be...that guy. And he won’t be. If it’s true what Noah says, if his home planet is a dead and unreachable ideal and Michael has to find a new life’s work, then his next most noble calling is being the man Alex deserves, and acting like a possessive loser is not the way he gets there.

Alex squeezes his hand reassuringly. “I don’t think the Caribbean is in our future, to be honest. I’d never be able to live down your tan lines. And technically Jake only speaks five languages, which is one less than me, so no worries there.”

“Does he look like Harrison Ford, though?”

“Not really, but he was Indy for Halloween one year. I think I even have a picture, if you—you wanted to see him, in case you recognize him around town…?”

The words seem forced through the dam of Alex’s teeth, but Michael takes them for the olive branch they are and nods. Alex gets up and makes his way to the shelf, where he retrieves a little box labeled with just the years of his second deployment, riffles through it, then comes up with the picture.

Sure enough, there’s Alex, grinning to show off his cheap vampire fangs, his arm slung around the shoulders of a lanky guy with a crew cut and a Party City-quality Indiana Jones costume. They look…happy. Though the picture still captures the dark circles under Alex’s eyes and his stiff, uncomfortable posture, his smile is big and genuine, and the tall guy is staring at him like he’s the sun itself.

Michael runs his thumb gently across the miniature of Alex’s smiling face. If you got in close enough to this Alex, you could still have seen the holes where his piercings used to be. Michael wonders if Jake ever asked him about it and if Alex told him the truth.

“Disqualified. He’s not wearing the hat,” Michael says.

Alex clears his throat and slips the picture out of Michael’s hands, busying himself with slotting it back into place. “Yeah,” he says, “I made him take it off.”

Michael’s breath catches. Needing to be close to him, Michael takes the box of pictures from him, puts it on the end table, and cradles his face in his hands, watching his face from as close as he can get, his heart pounding in his chest. Alex wraps his hands around Michael’s wrists and clings to him in return.

“Alex,” Michael murmurs, and Alex sighs, his breath washing over Michael’s face. He just holds him while he breathes for a little bit, knowing he needs it, knowing Alex.

“I should have told you,” he says eventually. His eyes are beautiful when they finally open, dark and barely shot with color in the warm indoor light.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide,” Michael says, and touches his lips to his cheek.

Alex drops his hands from Michael’s wrists to slide them up his back instead.

“I didn’t want to bring it up. There wasn’t reason, and…I thought it would be…I don’t know, cruel. Considering the circumstances that had me dating other people.”

Michael laughs a little bit and shakes his head. _Alex._ This will be a thing for their whole lives, Michael thinks, that Alex will be working on a need to know basis, while Michael is trying to gorge himself on every scrap of information he can stuff into all the slots in his brain labeled _Alex._ It’s exhilarating to be so mildly annoyed and to look at a whole future of it.

“I won’t say thinking about—all that time—doesn’t still hurt. But this guy, he was a part of your life when I couldn’t be. And I wanna know who you are, remember?”

Alex rubs idly up and down Michael’s back like he needs to be touching a new part of him every second, like just holding him wasn’t enough anymore.

“Tell me about him,” Michael urges softly. “If he’s gonna be around, I need to know if he was good to you.”

“Will you be disappointed in me if I say ‘it’s complicated?’”

Michael laughs and headbutts him gently. “Nah. You think I don’t know complicated? I spent the horniest years of my life working on a ranch with almost no supervision and then had to work with those same guys for like the next eight years.”

“I mean, he was. He was good. I mean, we’re still friends. But we’d both left people behind, and…I think we hurt each other. Trying to pretend. But he _was_ good. And he’s important to me, even if we kind of fell out of contact.” Alex is quiet for a moment, his attention focused on his thumb stroking a freckle on Michael’s cheekbone. “He was my first. My first not-you.”

Michael takes a sharp breath, forcing his lungs to re-inflate after Alex’s words hit him in the chest like a cannonball. 

My first not-you. Does Michael even remember who that was for him? The first person he touched in his life after Alex? It’s such a blur of pain and hiding somewhere deep inside himself, those memories are…buried. God it’s good that Alex had something good. Even if it rings off his nerves that Michael wasn’t…good enough to be that thing, not then, not there. That he wasn’t given that chance.

I would have been good to you, Michael thinks, the little and pathetic part of him curled at the back of his brain. He knows how to live with that voice, though, so he ignores it. And there’s enough, more than enough space left over for him to be grateful that Alex had someone, someone to help him through. Alex said they’d both left people behind—so maybe this Jake guy even understood, a little bit.

“Do you want to meet him?” Alex says, holding Michael a little tighter, the words falling over themselves to get out.

“Yeah, if you want me to. But you don’t have to. Seriously. I know I kind of freaked out earlier, but if you don’t want two parts of your life colliding like that, I do understand.”

There. Now Alex has a nice, safe out—which is to say Michael does, an out that doesn’t involve having to sit and wash in being an embarrassment to the successful military ex. Just in case.

“He asked me to meet him this weekend. I was going to say no, but.” He firms up his shoulders, and Michael gives them an appreciative caress. “But no. I think I should do it. And I think I’d like you to be there.”

“Then I’ll be there.” And Michael kisses him to seal the promise, a smile on his lips.


	2. Chapter 2

Jake is _tall._ That’s the first and only thing Michael notices about him. He has to unfold himself out of the chair to avoid banging his knees on the bottom of the table, and when he manages and pulls himself up to height he towers a good six inches over Alex and Michael both. He has a nice smile, too, if you’re into that sort of thing. And he’s _beaming_ as the two of them approach, comes out to meet them with his hand already outstretched to shake, and Alex takes it, Jake pumping his arm up and down while he grins so big his face must be killing him. Michael hangs back to let the reunion happen, hands in his pockets, thumbs in his belt loops so he can tug at them with all the nervous twitching in his hands.

The restaurant is nice, but not too nice, not even by Roswell standards. Jake’s clearly made an attempt with his clothes, but his attempt is a business-casual button down with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tanned forearms. His slacks are pressed and neat as a pin, but Michael won’t judge too harshly for that. His hair is still close-cropped like it was Halloween of 2012. He’s…yeah, he’s handsome, in a normal and kind way, an honest way that reminds Michael of the smell of the old hayloft in the summer and the feeling of straw on his back and warm hands exploring his body on a scratchy old blanket. Michael doesn’t trust easy, but if Jake’s calling up memories like that, he can let himself relax a little bit.

“Jake, this is Michael. My boyfriend.”

“Hey,” Michael says, taking Jake’s hand. His handshake is a little more subdued than the workout Alex got, but Jake is still firm and eager, and he hasn’t dropped that grin of his.

“Thanks for coming! I was a little worried when Alex said he’d like to bring you—thought I might be signing myself up for the third degree or something—but when I found out it was the same Michael I knew I had to meet you.”

“The same Michael?”

“Yeah.” Jake winks at him, and Michael’s eyebrows go up. “I’m happy for you guys.”

“Uh…thanks?”

“Should we sit?” Alex cuts in. The tips of his ears are bright red, and Michael’s eyebrows climb even further towards his hairline.

“It really is so good to see you,” Jake says as they take their chairs.

The second they’re seated, Alex grabs Michael’s knee in a vice grip, nails digging into the denim. His hand is a little sweaty, clammy when Michael covers it to try and settle him. Is Michael being here part of what’s making him so nervous?

“Gotta say, I was surprised to hear you re-upped this time,” Jake continues.

Alex clears his throat. “Yeah, well…you know how it is.”

“I do. And if nothing else, I’m glad it’s giving me an opportunity to work with you again.” Another ready smile follows right on the tail of the last one, even if this one is a little more subdued and sympathetic. “How do you feel about it, Michael?” He takes a sip of water, and his muddy hazel eyes are suddenly hawklike over the rim of the glass.

“Uh.” Alex’s hand digs into him harder, and Michael rubs the back of his hand with his thumb. Jake hasn’t even opened his menu yet; he watches and waits for his answer with that smile on his face and something dangerous in his eyes. “Uh,” Michael glances over at Alex, who is laser focused on his glass of water, face like stone. “Well, I mean, it’s what he—what we thought was best at the time, and since he was able to get it in his contract that he’d be staying put for a while, I was…fine.”

Oh, you know, I’m still working through the soul-crushing guilt that not only did Alex sell more of his life to the military to help me and mine but also I that I was too busy trying to drown myself in household chemicals to talk about it with him, but every relationship is a work in progress! Anyway, I’m an alien who’s wanted by the same government you serve for blowing up one of the black site prisons they use to experiment on my people and also for existing, how’s your mother in law doing?

“Fine, huh?”

“Jake,” Alex says.

“Okay, fine, I’m being a little intense. I’ve got family who don’t get why I stay,” he directs to Michael, then to Alex he says, “I got in a huge fight with Sarah over it, like, five hours before I got on the plane. Sorry for being weird.” He laughs and looks genuinely contrite.

Michael tries to relax, but Alex doesn’t lose any of the stiffness in his posture. He does at least stop squeezing Michael’s knee like he’s trying to rip his kneecap off, though, and Michael massages the back of his hand again.

“How is Sarah?” Alex asks, then to Michael he explains, “Jake’s sister.”

Jake shrugs, his massive hands coming up in an exaggerated ‘what can you do’ gesture. “She’s doing well. Divorced and remarried since the last time you saw her. Went back to school and got a teaching degree, and she’s real happy with the new guy, so. It’s just we still don’t see eye to eye on most things. But I’m happy for her.” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and holds it out to them, flicking through an album of pictures of what looks to be Sarah’s wedding day. From the pictures, Michael wouldn’t be surprised if she was even taller than Isobel, so it must run in the family. The last one in the album is of Jake on the dance floor with a guy in a matching vest, the two of them chest to chest and mouth to mouth, off in their own little world.

“That’s Rohit, my boyfriend. He couldn’t get away from work to come out here with me, but he’s visiting for the first time in about three weeks.”

Michael makes a sympathetic noise. “That sucks for you guys. Been together long?”

“Almost five years, right?” Alex says. “After you had your appendix out, wasn’t it?”

“Okay, the pictures are going away now,” Jake replies, his skin showing a blush way brighter than Alex’s does, “Didn’t realize I’d be roped into telling that story just for showing off my guy but okay I see how it is.”

Alex grins his sharp grin, finally looking up, and after one last brief squeeze his hand comes off Michael’s knee. “You should have been more prepared then, Lieutenant.”

“Let’s just say that the man I love is as patient as I am susceptible to the aftereffects of anesthesia and leave it at that, huh?”

Alex laughs, a true rocking-back-in-his-seat laugh, and it sets Michael fully at his ease, most comfortable letting Alex lead the emotional tone of the conversation. With the tension finally cut, Michael lets himself lean forward and rest his chin on his palm, watching Alex talk, letting the conversation flow over him without cutting in while Alex reconnects to his friend, talking more with his hands, laughing more easily. Jake seems kind of contagious that way, a smile and a laugh for everything—and he doesn’t try to freeze Michael out of the conversation, either, even though Michael is content to just sit there and not really listen and watch Alex talk and move. He’s gorgeous tonight, his shirt open a little at the neck, his long-fingered hand back on Michael’s knee, warm and caressing this time. Michael slips into an easy place, his earlier fears that Alex was trying to cover up being embarrassed of him not _gone_ but, at least, set aside, no longer needed.

The conversation flows for a good couple hours. Michael is a convenient audience for them to share stories and relive them a little bit over again. Even when they’ve paid the bill and are getting up to leave, it’s with promises to do this again when Rohit is in town and Michael smiling to himself with a wry little smile because he’s the _double dating_ kind now and goddamn if he isn’t happy about it.

Then, when they reach the parking lot, Jake stops.

“Hey, do you mind if I borrow him for a couple minutes before we head out?” Jake asks, inclining his chin toward Michael. Alex raises an eyebrow and glances between them, and Michael just shrugs his agreement.

With a bemused smile, Alex says, “Sure. I’ll be in the car.” He gives Michael’s shoulder a squeeze as he passes, and Michael looks around to watch him go, eyes on his back until he slips behind the driver’s side door.

Michael shoves his hands in his pockets for lack of anything else to do with them. If Jake wants to corner him to read him the riot act or tell him he’s not good enough for Alex or something he could have at least had the decency to do it somewhere Michael had something to lean against or sink into, to hold him up or have his back.

“You got the height advantage, but I’ll warn you—I’m scrappy,” Michael drawls.

“I’m…not going to hit you? What the hell, man.”

“Just like to be prepared. I got one of those faces.” Michael gives Jake a grin and a wink, but all Jake gives back is a concerned look starting to border on shrink-y, so Michael hurries on, “What’s up?”

“Okay. Okay.” He takes a huge breath like he’s psyching himself up for something. “There’s no socially acceptable way to say this, really, so I’m going to jump in.”

“I’ve never been socially acceptable a day in my life. Shoot.”

“Okay.” He takes another huge breath. “The first guy I loved was killed in a drive by when we were eighteen.”

Michael rocks back a bit at that, at the ice-cold awkward shock of someone else’s old grief. His eyes go huge and wide and he scrambles for something to say, something that’s different from the plain shit people spout.

Jake doesn’t wait for him to find it, though. “He was coming out of a club and a car jumped the curb and it was just…over. There was no real way to know if it was a hate crime or if the driver was just drunk. I was two hours away at school. We didn’t talk every day, so I didn’t even know for two weeks. His parents wouldn’t even let me go to the funeral, because I turned their son gay, and if he hadn’t been at a gay club then he’d still be alive.”

“Fuck, man.”

“I know. And I’m sorry to dump all that on you, but it’s important for what I need to tell you. It’s why I joined the Air Force in the first place—I was lost, depressed. I couldn’t keep going in school and I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to my hometown where everything would remind me of him, so I dropped out and joined up. And then I met Alex.”

Michael coughs to hide the catch of his breath. He can picture it so clearly—the way Alex looked with his hair shorn and his dark, dulled eyes set straight ahead, like the way he looked when Michael hid behind the neighbor’s car and risked getting hauled in for trespassing or—caught—so he could see Alex off that day he left to report for training.

“I was—I mean, I was a _mess._ Could barely keep it together. Kept getting everyone in trouble because of it, and he was so…when he cornered me one day, I honest to god thought he was going to kill me. But he helped me instead. Taught me how to keep my head down and survive, and I just…my story just came out. And after that, I didn’t know why until way later when he finally told me about what happened with his father before he enlisted, but we just kind of clung to each other.”

And again, Michael is relieved that Alex wasn’t as alone as Michael was, that even as tangled up and hurting and hollow as he must have been, he had _someone_ to help him, someone to share that piece of himself with even when it was against the law. Michael owes this man, even if he wouldn’t accept it, even if Alex would deny it too. Michael’s in his debt.

“We dated for a little over a year before we broke up because we didn’t have a whole lot in common other than a little bit of shared trauma. If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of chatty.” He winks. “And since I’d already spilled my tragic backstory, I wanted to talk about Jordan, like, all the time. Things I missed. Regrets I had. Fears. And Alex was a great listener…but not so great at reciprocity. He’d never let me in, never let me take any of his burdens on. Made me feel like a real dick. But there’s one thing he did let me do. Insisted, actually.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Michael says. He leans back as far as he can go without actually taking a step back, trying to give Jake space, trying not to look too interested. He’s hungry, yeah, for any scrap of information he can get about this part of Alex’s life. But if Alex wants him to know, he has to trust that Alex will tell him. It took a massive government conspiracy to get Michael to open up the first time. He can’t be overly critical of Alex’s struggle to do the same.

“I think I kind of do, actually.” Jake shoves his hands into his pockets and lets out a long breath, steaming the cold night air. “I don’t know if it’s for me or if it’s for Alex or what, but I think I should tell you this. You know…I look at him and I still see that nineteen year old kid. My escape. The only gay guy I knew, the only person who knew my grief. It’s not especially healthy. It’s a big part of the reason we’ve been avoiding each other for half a decade. But yeah, I think I need to do this for _him_ more than anyone else.”

Well. What’s Michael supposed to do with that? At seventeen Alex had big, expressive eyes and he licked his lips as a nervous habit and Michael could have sat for hours in the too loud violent cafeteria watching him paint his nails from four tables away. He didn’t know Alex at nineteen, not really, but Jake did. And Michael wants to honor every version of Alex everywhere.

He sends a quick text: _Jake caught me up talking about the good old days. You ok with that?_

Alex types, then erases, then does so a couple more times before a reply finally comes through: _I love you. Tell him I said thank you._

Michael slides his phone back into his pocket. “Okay. Hit me.”

“It’s just this.”

Jake holds out his phone, open to his contacts. And right there: Alex’s Michael.

Michael’s fingers tremble, just slightly, as he reaches out to take it, to hold it in his hands and marvel over it and what it could _mean._

Jake shoves his hands back in his pockets. “I’ve had you in my phone for nine years. Don’t know if the number’s any good anymore, of course. But you were the one thing…he never wanted to talk about the past. He never wanted to talk about you. But before we deployed, he asked me…if anything happened to him, if I would talk to you. Tell you he was sorry. That he was always thinking of you. ‘Hear his voice for me one last time.’ That’s how he worded it. I’ve never been able to forget those words.”

Michael’s mouth is too numb to form any words at all. He’s all—cracked open, Alex has reached inside his chest and pried his ribs apart. Michael used to write Alex letters and burn them in his fire pit because smoke becomes air and particulates travel on the wind and there was as much chance of Alex breathing him in from a world away as there was him opening any letter Michael sent him. Then there are the letters he kept, the ones full of hope and pain and—Michael kept them, just in case, like he kept one of Alex’s too-small black hoodies, so that he’d have something to bury if the nightmare came to pass.

 _Alex’s Michael._ It’s there like teardrops smearing the ink off his ten cent ballpoint pen. It’s there like a cotton sleeve held to his cheek on a sleepless night.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Jake says, slipping his phone out of Michael’s limp hand. The man has a smile for every occasion, and the one he’s wearing right now is sweet and sad. “I really am just so happy you guys found each other in the end. It was really nice to meet you, Michael. Thanks for helping me keep a promise, yeah?”

And with a jaunty two-fingered wave, Jake turns around and heads for his car, those long legs eating up space so quick that before Michael can process him leaving, he’s gone.

His phone buzzes: _Just saw Jake’s car leaving. Everything ok?_

 _Fine. Headsd yiour way,_ he responds. It takes him four tries to type the message even that legibly, his hands are shaking so bad.

He nearly jogs across the parking lot, fumbles with the handle before he can yank the door open and climb inside, climb over the gearshift still clumsy and needy to stuff his unsteady hands into Alex’s pockets.

“Hey,” Alex croons, cupping the back of his neck when Michael ducks in to rub his forehead against his shoulder, sawing out rough breaths in the space between them.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Alex says, holding him close. “Whatever he had to say, it’s in the past. I’m here. You’re here. We are.”

There was a time when Michael laid on his back and begged the sky to let him stop needing Alex Manes, and there was a time it broke him that the begging didn’t work. And now he’s here, with Alex’s voice present and physical in his ear, the whole biological process of speaking, from the vibration of his chest to the movement of his throat and lips and tongue to the way his breath blows past the outside of Michael’s ear, and he’s _home._ He’s not alone.

“Michael?” A little bit of fear creeps into Alex’s voice, so Michael pulls back to look at him, blinks away the wobbly film of tears in his eyes.

“I just. Love you. God, I love you,” Michael rasps. He’s never going to stop saying it, now that he’s allowed, and it’s never going to feel any different. Like ripping the Band-Aid off a cut that’s all healed and feeling fresh air on the skin beneath.

“I love you too,” Alex whispers back, a kiss pressed to Michael’s temple, his other hand coming up to grab his waist.

“Take me home,” Michael says, but he doesn’t let go, not to let Alex drive or for any other reason, not for several long minutes.


End file.
